I have been muddling through Heinlein, I forget how prescient he was about certain things, like cell phones, and joke telling robots. Also getting ready to start reading How to live on Mars by Robert Zubrin. The author is the President of the Mars Society, an international organization dedicated to furthering the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
The book helps you find, get to, adapt to and get along socially while on your martian excursion. And he recommends that you go freight class.
And just to prove that we are closer to the Brave New World, this article by James Brooks, Cyborgs at work: employees getting implanted with microchips. Epicenter chips consenting employees with a small microchip implanted between thumb and index finger.
What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand.And don't tell them about your antiquated sixties era fears of Big Brother, the surrender of privacy, etc., these kids want to be part of the future.
The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted.
"The biggest benefit I think is convenience," said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door by merely waving near it. "It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys."
"People ask me; 'Are you chipped?' and I say; 'Yes, why not,'" said Fredric Kaijser, 47, the chief experience officer at Epicenter. "And they all get excited about privacy issues and what that means and so forth. And for me it's just a matter of I like to try new things and just see it as more of an enabler and what that would bring into the future."
Sandra Haglof, 25, who works for Eventomatic, an events company that works with Epicenter, has had three piercings before, and her left hand barely shakes as Osterlund injects the small chip.
"I want to be part of the future," she laughs.
Some worry about the ethical considerations of allowing such an intrusion into one's body.
Ben Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, says hackers could conceivably gain huge swathes of information from embedded microchips. The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more sophisticated the microchips become.I predict that one day, very soon, it will be illegal not to have a chip. Much like a modern day cell phone, your every location and action will be monitored and transmitted to Central Control. And who cares, if you are sinless or better yet absolved, like what exactly do you have to hide?
"The data that you could possibly get from a chip that is embedded in your body is a lot different from the data that you can get from a smartphone," he says. "Conceptually you could get data about your health, you could get data about your whereabouts, how often you're working, how long you're working, if you're taking toilet breaks and things like that."
Libberton said that if such data is collected, the big question remains of what happens to it, who uses it, and for what purpose.
1 comment:
Kiss your anonymity goodbye. They'll track you from cradle to grave. And they'll know where you are in case they need to pick you up and ship you off to the re-education camp for some hard labor or a lobotomy. This planet would be great if it wasn't for all of the assholes on it! Thanks Rob
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